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Open Participants 2020, The Network

Three Gifted Poems for #CLMOOC

dogtrax on February 13, 2020February 13, 2020

Through the course of the day yesterday, I wrote three different poems as gifts, inspired by our month-long Poetry Port adventure in the CLMOOC community, where folks are writing poems to daily themes, composing words as gifts to others, and requesting poems be written for them. (learn more) The first poem, above, was written as a gift for the collective students in the Networked Narratives class, which I dip in and out of as an open participant. I went through […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

The NetNarr Field Guide: A Journal Worth Exploring

dogtrax on May 17, 2019May 17, 2019

Early on, I was pretty active in the Networked Narratives course as an open online participant, as a sort of satellite with a few others to the actual university course being taught by Alan Levine and Mia Zamora. My comic strip alter-egos — The Internet Kid and Horse with No Name — were also part of the Twitter conversations and activities. At some point, I admittedly lost track in a peripheral way (this is the beauty of RSS feeds — […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

CLMOOC: Where Rings and Planets May Yet Connect Us

dogtrax on April 16, 2019April 16, 2019

Greg has been building out a few fun, helpful video tutorials on our move in CLMOOC to use Web Rings and RSS Planets to gather the work and writing and sharing and connection of people together after the plug got pulled on G+ space. Sheri wrote a useful post that gives more specific details on joining these ventures. The CLMOOC Web Ring, still under construction with a few hiccups along the way (including this platform of Edublogs not quite in […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

Conversations in the Margins: NetArt with NetNarr

dogtrax on March 22, 2019March 22, 2019

Networked Narratives held another of its regular Studio Visits earlier this week as the theme of the online course with an open invitation (allowing me and others to join in) shifts from the darkness of the web and technology to the light and the possible. Things are going from negative to positive. Here, Alex Saum is the guest, and she has been exploring the world of NetArt, or the leveraging of technology platforms to explore the notions of art. This […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

Our Real Selves/Our Fake Selves/ Our Shadow Selves

dogtrax on March 19, 2019March 19, 2019

The mic hears everything flickr photo by kreg.steppe shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license “We’re looking at the relationship between fake and real.” — NPR Host Alix Spiegel The National Public Radio’s Invisibilia program turned its focus on the idea of our Invisible Selves, the way our online social media-infused identities are often in conflict with our offline identities. This radio program — Point, Shoot — is long, as a deep dive into an important issue, but it is […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

CLMOOC Book Group: Exploring the World of Nerdfighters

dogtrax on March 17, 2019March 17, 2019

(Note from Kevin: I actually wrote this post two days ago, thinking I would post it yesterday. I left it lingering in my draft bin. Then, the massacre in New Zealand happened, and I had a poem spilling forth about madness and hate and social media that I just could not shake without writing it, and that poem is what I shared yesterday as a blog post. The final stanza is a call about kindness in the world. I wondered […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

The Shared Humanity in Our Digital Lives

dogtrax on March 15, 2019March 15, 2019

The other day — Sunday, in fact — my wife came home from service at our church, raving about the sermon from our passionate, activist, youth-orientated co-pastor. The theme was technology in our lives, and Pastor Sarah, who often uses hip and modern allusions in our sermons, talked about how our devices are removing us from our interactions. My wife later sent me the link to her post/words/sermon later, which includes Sarah’s sermon (if you are interested in listening, you […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

#CLMOOC Book Club: Affinity Online

dogtrax on March 1, 2019March 1, 2019

I still remember the student who came back from a weekend trip to Boston, all hyped up about the cosplay convention, and how excited they were during our morning meeting that they had found others who were into what they were into. Their classmates looked on as they explained the concept of dressing up like comic characters and interacting with others as if they were crazy. The student showed us pictures, and we all were intrigued. The classmates, though, didn’t […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

The Network Effect of Kindness

dogtrax on February 26, 2019February 26, 2019

Kindness flickr photo by David Lee King shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license I was driving to school yesterday and I caught this piece on NPR about social media effect — but on how kindness can also spread. We focus so much on the dark side of the social networking effect on us in terms of negativity that it is good to remember that we also respond to the positives of our networks — that one person doing a […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

NetNarr Slow-Listening: Studio Visit with Anne-Marie

dogtrax on February 14, 2019February 14, 2019

This week’s Studio Visit in Networked Narratives was with Anne-Marie Scott, and I put the video archive into Vialogues for those who want to join me in another round of slow-listening and commenting in the margins. Anne-Marie will be watching the discussion, so feel free to leave her questions there. Go to the Vialogues Peace (in listening in), Kevin

Open Participants 2019, The Network

Lateral Reading: Who Made This and Why?

dogtrax on February 13, 2019

This is a helpful video with John Greene about reading deeper, and understanding, digital information and digital media. Greene, author (The Fault in Our Stars) and vlogger (often with his brother), digs into how we can understand what’s behind the veil of what we read online, and to understand the move he calls “lateral reading.” Greene’s key question of inquiry that we must always ask ourselves: Who made this and why? He explains that we have been taught to read […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

Networked Narratives: Listening In On Chris Gilliard

dogtrax on February 10, 2019February 10, 2019

Surveillance flickr photo by Simon Aughton shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license I’ve been taking my time, listening over a few days to the classroom conversation that the always-intriguing Chris Gilliard had with Networked Narratives the other day. Chris is insightful in his look at how technology impacts our lives, bringing to the surface not just the privacy issues but also the concerns of how our data might be used against us (and is being used against us) by […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

Networked Narratives: Oh, This Dystopia

dogtrax on February 8, 2019February 8, 2019

utopia banished flickr photo by kr428 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license Networked Narratives hosted a Twitter chat the other while folks were watching this video — We’re Building a Dystopia Just to Make People Click on Ads by Zeynep Tufekci — and so I popped the video into Vialogues for slow viewing and commenting. Thanks to Karen and Terry for jumping in with me, so I didn’t feel so alone in the digital landscape of manipulation engines and algorithmic […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

Combining GIFs Together in Digital Alchemy Experiment

dogtrax on February 5, 2019February 5, 2019

This morning’s DS106 Daily Create call for “making stuff” was to merge a name with a famous person with the name of something else. Betty White Cake was the example (chuckle). I wanted to do Edge of Darkness, with the U2 guitarist. And I wanted to merge two animated GIFs — the Edge with a dark scene — but I didn’t know how to do that. So I learned how. I searched the Net and re-discovered Animated GIF Maker (which I have […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

Digital Palimpsest: Words Lost to the Night

dogtrax on February 3, 2019

Here’s a poem that emerged rather unexpectedly from a daily alchemy prompt through Networked Narratives. It began here with some silhouettes and a call for wondering who shadows might be. I wrote a poem and layered it on top of the prompt image itself: #dda248 #netnarr I am Obscure … pic.twitter.com/PcRyIbAJso — KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) February 1, 2019 Notice how Wendy took that and went a step further, layering another piece on top of the layer. #dda248 #netnarr Lost ideas / […]